Thoughts on MMORPG

[ray245]

Every time I see a new MMO game coming out, it always seems like they are sticking to to the same old formula. It's essentially an RPG game with the additional features of you being able to chat with real humans and trade with them.

The thing that disappoints me in regards to MMORPG in particular, is the fact that there is no storyline progression at all. Why do I have to fight all sorts of monsters and slay the big ass dragon when I made no significant impact in the MMO world.

After killing the dragon, the only difference in the game is the fact that NPC would talk to me in a different manner and I can receive some bonus weapons or skills for slaying the dragon. Would we see more prosperity in the town which was affected by the Dragon attacks? Would my actions change gameplay experience of other players? I don't think so.

Even if I slay the big dragon, I know that the big dragon will be respawned for other players to kill. There's nothing exclusive about the quest I have completed just now, and other people would repeat what I have accomplished before.

Moreover, despite the opportunities an MMORPG game has to offer, game developer have yet to develop a game where other human players are the ones who are obstructing you from accomplishing your quest. Instead of fighting through all the low level NPCs to reach the boss, you have to fight your way through all the low-level to mid level players to reach the boss.

For example, make the dragon quest an exclusive event, and the dragon will never respawn once it has been killed off. This essentially means people are competing against each other to slay the dragon. Not only would people have to race against others to kill off the dragon, it also creates an incentive for people who are going on such a quest to kill off their fellow competitors.

You don't want other players to take away your credits, and steal all the exp points and gold you can receive from killing the dragon. Especially if those players are low level players.

Once you slay the Dragon, not only did you gain all sort of bonus points and all that, you are given a heroes welcome, and the town that was constantly attacked by the dragon becomes more prosperous. It can also open up new areas for everyone in the game to explore, and fight against all sort of new creatures that is trying to take over the Dragon's position as the new boss of a certain region.

This makes the game more challenging, and makes you feel that you really accomplished something.

The other thing that needs be reworked is the experience gain system. How do you get people to kill off the big dragon when they might not even receive any experience points due to the fact that they fail to strike the final blow? In my opinion, you can gain experience points for every damage that you have inflicted on the dragon.

Even if you damage the dragon by one HP, the amount of exp points you can gain is far more than killing off a low level monster.

On the other hand, if you are the one who strike the final blow on the dragon, even if the dragon is left with a single HP, the experience points you can gain is more than the experience points you can gain by damaging the dragon by a 100 HP.

Due to the fact that the dragon quest is now an exclusive event, quest would be constantly introduced to get new players to play the game, and the game experience of the MMORPG will keep on changing. A person who started playing in 2009 would face different kinds of enemies from the person who played the MMO series in 2008. He might even hear stories about other players who have slain the Dragon, understand how they affected the game experience of the MMORPG and all that.

I think that is something that MMORPG can really offer, and creates an environment where a person's action can drastically affect the gameplay experience of other players.

It would be nice if people can spot any flaws in my idea, and offer new ideas to improve MMORPG.

[Stark]

Welcome to 1998. I remember back when most people thought as you do; before people realised that MMOs are about selling a service.

That said, most MMOs frequently have world events like you describe to get special items etc. However, you really have no idea how the MMO thing works; even if you needed to kill a dragon to open up a region on each server or shard, it would be dead before 98% of the playerbase even knew it was there.

I'm not sure how much information is still around, but a never-survived-beta MMO called Wish back in the early 21st century attempted the 'constant storytelling' thing you describe, as well as a per-use skill system (which avoids last-hit woes but introduces constant grind instead).

[ray245]

That said, most MMOs frequently have world events like you describe to get special items etc. However, you really have no idea how the MMO thing works; even if you needed to kill a dragon to open up a region on each server or shard, it would be dead before 98% of the playerbase even knew it was there.

I was thinking of introducing some sort of countdown before players get to fight that Dragon, and making the dragon so hard to kill that you cannot kill it in a matter of minutes. Since people can gain exp from simply damaging the dragon, they might can choose to fight the dragon early in the morning and return to fight the dragon later in the evening.

If properly balanced, a sizeable amount of players would get the chance fight the monster.

Even if they didn't get to kill the dragon, the majority of the players would still be able to have fun in fighting off large numbers of lower level bosses and armies of monsters that leads up to the Dragon slaying quest.

For those players that missed the events entirely, just let them know that there are still a large amount of event quest left for them to play.

They might not be the ones who even get the chance to even get a glimpse of the dragon, but they can be the ones who slay the Naga queen.

[ray245]

Run out of edit time:

Some quest might not even need to open up new areas of land to explore or anything like that. Some event quest might simply be a case of slaying some lower level boss that is not so significant to the game's storyline, and the players can still enjoy the fun of competiting against each other. There can also be events where players of different factions get engage against each other in some major event. Such as assassinating the leader of one particular faction, and people of different factions have to fight through tons of players who are being paid as bodyguards.

Some major events in the games can even last for days instead of a few hours.

It really annoys me that there is no sense of danger in most MMORPG game. In a single player RPG game, at the least you know the fact that once you die, you cannot respawn, and the town you are protecting will be wiped out. In MMORPG game, even if you fail in the quest, nothing bad is ever going to happen to the town you are defending, or the people who needs you to complete the quest to survive.

When the safe zones is so artificial and you can get play in a world of chaos and war while being able to cut down trees without feeling the danger of you being killed off, it makes the game less fun in my opinion.

[Civil War Man]

MMOs don't work very well with a fully dynamic game world. Take, for example, the first two Human zones in World of Warcraft (Elwynn Forest and Westfall). The overarching plot for those two zones revolves around fighting a group of bandits who are attempting to destroy the Stormwind government because the nobles screwed them over (most of the bandits were workers who busted their asses getting the city rebuilt after the Orcs destroyed it in Warcraft 1, and became bandits when the nobles refused to pay). It culminates in systematically assassinating the entire bandit leadership as well as a noble who was funneling them information and material.

Suppose this was a one-time deal. The first group that manages to finish this storyline basically destroy the bandits. The only way any others can get involved in this storyline is in a mopping up action. So what is left for people who start new human characters? I suppose you could have another bandit become leader and have there be a sudden resurgence, but then why not just have the storyline open to all characters?

I'd say that the games that have gotten closest to getting it right was World of Warcraft with phasing (when you complete certain quest chains, the game world in that area is changed for you, but not for anyone who hasn't completed the quests) and City of Heroes with Ouroboros and the Flashback system (allows players to go back in time and experience previous content). I don't have any experience with Ouroboros, but phasing isn't a perfect solution even if it is a good step. The main weakness is that if you have completed a phased quest chain, you can't help a friend who hasn't.

[Pulp Hero]

What about a "King of the Hill" style system: You acquire the proper skills and information, fight through the throngs on NPC bad guys, and then defeat the evil dark lord. Your reward is becoming the new dark lord and having control over your limited kingdom and NPC minions RTS/4X style (clanmemebers get positions as Evil Lieutenants and such). The next group that comes along tries to slay you.

[Stark]

a) Timing is a pain in the ass; many games have to give people 24h notice to make sure the badguys show up

b) 95% of the MMO playing public hate PvP

c) PvP is generally extraordinary cheesy and works with totally different builds than PvE

It MIGHT work if most players never had the intention of engaging in this kind of play, but it means you've just done what heaps of other MMOs have done and introduced a primitive clan warfare system (yes, clans will dominate any PvP of this type) that most people will ignore and the clanners will whinge about and constantly demand 'fixing' with.

[RedImperator]

The only MMO I have any experience with (and that's about a month's worth, so take it for what it's worth) is EVE, where most of the playerbase consists of PvEers in empire (safe) space who ignore the big events, and the rest is PvPers in 0.0 (anything goes) space who are too busy murdering each other to bother with the big events.

[Stark]

Yeah, EVE is really an outlier on the MMO 'business model', given the way it's PvP and universe works. Even they have the whole 'dynamic event' thing going on (if they've stopped spawning motherships full of awesome loot for BoB to pop, lol), and most of them are over before the playerbase at large even knows/cares they're happening.

EVE is pretty dynamic and player-based for an MMO, but you have to remember EVE is a few hundred thousand subs (although it's grown a lot in the last few years apparently) and WoW is millions.

[Stormin]

How about after you finish a quest the world changes for you alone? If you did the quest to remove ghosts from the shipwreck every time afterward where you go to the same place the wreck is infested with mud crabs or something. Someone coming along who hasn't done the quest will see you killing ghosts while you see yourself farming crabs. This could be done for a lot of quests but will involve a lot more work while the game is being made.

[Stark]

WoW does that already, as mentioned above.. well, it's tidier than your idea, but it's the same 'actual progressing world' sort of thing.

[Alferd Packer]

I think the size of the MMO world also precludes easily implementing quests/events that change it. You can cross most MMO worlds on foot in a few hours; with thousands of people playing per server, there's just simply not enough changeable shit to go around. I suppose a development team could come up with a way of making a huge, procedurally-generated world, wherein most fuckery won't amount to a hill of beans on a large scale, but could change things significantly on a local level.

[ray245]

WoW does that already, as mentioned above.. well, it's tidier than your idea, but it's the same 'actual progressing world' sort of thing.

Which kinda defeats the point of playing an MMORPG game. This essentially means that you can easily turn it into a single-player RPG game with the same type of quest and storyline.

This mean the only difference such an MMORPG game can have is the fact that you get to PvP with people in a special PvP zones, getting to organise a small raiding party with humans instead of AI and getting to buy goods from human players as opposed to buying those items from AI.

[Ghost Rider]

WoW does that already, as mentioned above.. well, it's tidier than your idea, but it's the same 'actual progressing world' sort of thing.

Which kinda defeats the point of playing an MMORPG game. This essentially means that you can easily turn it into a single-player RPG game with the same type of quest and storyline.

This mean the only difference such an MMORPG game can have is the fact that you get to PvP with people in a special PvP zones, getting to organise a small raiding party with humans instead of AI and getting to buy goods from human players as opposed to buying those items from AI.

And that's what the masses want currently. They do not want some struggle against other players(not an original idea as more then a few failed MMOs have tried PvP all the time, anywhere anytime), or a piece of something that only the elite few will ever see because they organized into a clique beforehand, or finally a game wherein changes happen because of someone else.

Again, EVE is one of the more successful divergent games and it's in the hundreds of thousands. WoW is in the millions and dominates the market like nothing before it. That's is the perfect expression of what people want, and what they will pay for.

[Civil War Man]

The whole point of an MMO is that a majority of interactions are between players. Guilds, raids, auction houses, and world events (both plot and holidays) are provided by the developers, but are entirely player-driven. The fact that MMOs are player-driven is why the most successful ones have largely static game worlds. As Stark pointed out, having a one-time-only boss means that it'll be dead before most of the player base realizes that the boss was even there.

In the original World of Warcraft, about 0.1% of the player base beat Naxxramas. About the same percentage beat Sunwell Plateau. Blizzard is specifically moving away from the crushing difficulty of previous raids (unless the raid specifically triggers a higher difficulty through hard modes). Their rationale is that they don't want to put in months of work into designing an encounter that about 10,000 of their over 10,000,000-strong player base will be able to experience.

Your suggestions, if anything, would intentionally decrease the number of players who will be able to experience the content. Especially considering that not everyone starts playing an MMO at the same time. Sure, some events like the Opening of Ahn'Qiraj or the Scourge Invasion are one-time-only, but your suggestion means that only 10 people per server would have been able to experience Karazhan or Zul'Aman. It's just not a good business model.

[Oskuro]

And that's what the masses want currently. They do not want some struggle against other players(not an original idea as more then a few failed MMOs have tried PvP all the time, anywhere anytime), or a piece of something that only the elite few will ever see because they organized into a clique beforehand, or finally a game wherein changes happen because of someone else.

Nor do they want an MMO version of Civilization in wich you control a single unit rather than an empire, wich is what a truly "open" MMO world would ammount to. I'd like such a thing, but most people just want a glowing arrow pointing them to the next dragon to slay with glowie FX.

[Broomstick]

How about after you finish a quest the world changes for you alone? If you did the quest to remove ghosts from the shipwreck every time afterward where you go to the same place the wreck is infested with mud crabs or something. Someone coming along who hasn't done the quest will see you killing ghosts while you see yourself farming crabs. This could be done for a lot of quests but will involve a lot more work while the game is being made.

WoW, as mentioned, does that. Specifically, the Death Knight starting zone is one phased sequence after another. As you progress as a death knight the world does change as you reach certain goals, and changes permanently in that you can't go back to the prior state. Eventually it ends in an epic battle, after which you join the rest of the WoW universe.

It is also seen in the Wrathgate and Battle for the Undercity chains, where after you complete Wrathgate a part of the Dragonblight is forever changed for you, and one of the notable NPC's in the Undercity disappears. There's also a bit with major cities under martial law and basically shut down, followed by a return to business.

There is also phasing during the Sons of Hodir quest chain.

That's just off the top of my head.

Oh - wait, in Nagrand, in Outland, after you complete a particular quest chain you will, ever after, see dead people wandering around the zone.

There was also the opening of Ahn'Quiraj event, where both Alliance and Horde had to gather a lot resources, and a one-time event where the gates are opened, allowing people into the instance.

So such "permanent change" in the world does exist, but there are limitations right now, and possibly will be for some time to come. The techniques are improving and I expect that in future we'll see more examples of this.

[CDiehl]

Moreover, despite the opportunities an MMORPG game has to offer, game developer have yet to develop a game where other human players are the ones who are obstructing you from accomplishing your quest. Instead of fighting through all the low level NPCs to reach the boss, you have to fight your way through all the low-level to mid level players to reach the boss.

Of course not. What are players playing the big bad's mooks supposed to do when nobody's attacking that big bad? Do they stand around on guard duty? It's a game, not a job. People want to have fun, not spend money every month to be a glorified security guard.

Maybe the game, through the big bad, can give the players playing his troops tasks to do. However, when the good guys attack him, they'll probably all be off on various errands, which defeats the purpose of this idea.

A lot of your ideas would, and do, work in just about any other kind of RPG (such as tabletop and LARP), but not in an MMO.

[Vendetta]

I was thinking of introducing some sort of countdown before players get to fight that Dragon, and making the dragon so hard to kill that you cannot kill it in a matter of minutes. Since people can gain exp from simply damaging the dragon, they might can choose to fight the dragon early in the morning and return to fight the dragon later in the evening.

Welcome to Final Fantasy XI, we have 18 hour boss fights.

[Civil War Man]

Welcome to Final Fantasy XI, we have 18 hour boss fights.

You know what's really hilarious? The 18 hour fight failed to kill the boss. The Pandemonium Warden was completely undefeated until the entire fight was massively nerfed, and a timer put in so he would despawn 2 hours into the fight. Even then, it was first downed with literally minutes to spare. So the nerfed fight was somewhere around 1 hour, 56 minutes.

It's amazing the amount of bullshit MMO players put up with in those days. It just makes complaints about the current state of various MMOs sound pathetic.

[TheLostVikings]

Welcome to Final Fantasy XI, we have 18 hour boss fights.

You know what's really hilarious? The 18 hour fight failed to kill the boss. The Pandemonium Warden was completely undefeated until the entire fight was massively nerfed, and a timer put in so he would despawn 2 hours into the fight. Even then, it was first downed with literally minutes to spare. So the nerfed fight was somewhere around 1 hour, 56 minutes.

It's amazing the amount of bullshit MMO players put up with in those days. It just makes complaints about the current state of various MMOs sound pathetic.

And thats NOTHING, some of the first guys that managed to avoid instawipe against Absolute Virtue kept fighting for over Thirty Five Hours before they gave up.


And no offense but many of the ideas in the OP is piss poor, and really shows that you haven't played an MMORPG. So what if the Dragon respawns eventually? SO what if someone else gets to kill it too? So what if you are not some unique snowflake? These "exclusive events" that 99.999999999% of the players wont be able to experience it an horrible idea.

There is a reason Squeenix decided to make most of the new content for FFXI instanced instead of the old "exclusive" system they used for most of the original content. They needed to create fun for all their users, not just a small handful.

[Oskuro]

What I don't like about respawns is that they often kill the RP (yeah, I'm one of those) because they insist in making it like your character was The ONE to do it. Doesn't Age of Conan keep insisting that you're the CHOSEN ONE(tm)? So what are the other players then?

Of course, most mouth-breathing players can't feel satisfied if the monster doesn't die in a horrifying manner, so having, say Illidan fly away promising he'll be back, is not an option, he has to die so players feel EPIC.

Turns out linear storytelling and open worlds don't mix so well. Go figure.

[Stark]

The death thing is really a convention; the audience for 'hardcore' play is very small. I believe early MMOs had much steeper death penalties than current games, and as DP was relaxed more casual gamers started playing. Blame Diablo more han anything else I'd say.

You could build a game around the idea of proper death (say, by making everyone part of a guild or trribe that spawns mooks that replace your guy without being the same) but it'd be different and perhaps not popular.

[Mr Bean]

The death thing is really a convention; the audience for 'hardcore' play is very small. I believe early MMOs had much steeper death penalties than current games, and as DP was relaxed more casual gamers started playing. Blame Diablo more han anything else I'd say.

Old Death Penalties like Ashron's Call and Everquest which you could lose levels when you died? Or how about the original, Ultima Online where you could not only die but have your corpse picked over by your killer and be forced to rez with nothing.

[Stark]

Frankly in PvP focused games I think corpse-looting is fine... but then I can play EVE and automatically in the bottom 1% of the MMO market.